King Lear's Wife
February 29th, 1916.
PERSONS:
LEAR, King of Britain.
HYGD, his Queen.
GONERIL, daughter to Lear and Hygd.
CORDEIL, daughter to Lear and Hygd.
GORMFLAITH, waiting-woman to Hygd.
MERRYN, waiting-woman to Hygd.
A PHYSICIAN.
TWO ELDERLY WOMEN.
KING LEAR'S WIFE
MERRYN.
MANY, many must die who long to live,
Yet this one cannot die who longs to die:
Even her sleep, come now at last, thwarts death,
Although sleep lures us all half way to death....
I could not sit beside her every night
If I believed that I might suffer so:
I am sure I am not made to be diseased,
I feel there is no malady can touch me,
Save the red cancer, growing where it will.
O sweet Saint Cleer, and sweet Saint Elid too,
Shield me from rooting cancers and from madness:
Shield me from sudden death, worse than two death-beds;
Let me not lie like this unwanted queen,
Yet let my time come not ere I am ready,
Grant space enow to relish the watchers' tears
And give my clothes away and calm my features
And streek my limbs according to my will,
Not the hard will of fumbling corpse-washers.
LEAR.
Why are you here? Are you here for ever?
Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is she?
MERRYN.
O, Sire, move softly; the Queen sleeps at last.
LEAR,
Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is Gormflaith?
It is her watch.... I know; I have marked your hours.
Did the Queen send her away? Did the Queen
Bid you stay near her in her hate of Gormflaith?
You work upon her yeasting brain to think
That she's not safe except when you crouch near her
To spy with your dropt eyes and soundless presence.
MERRYN.
Sire, midnight should have ended Gormflaith's watch,
But Gormflaith had another kind of will
And ended at a godlier hour by slumber,
A letter in her hand, the night-lamp out.
She loitered in the hall when she should sleep.
My duty has two hours ere she returns.
LEAR.
The Queen should have young women about her bed,
Fresh cool-breathed women to lie down at her side
And plenish her with vigour; for sick or wasted women
Can draw a virtue from such abounding presence,
When night makes life unwary and looses the strings of being,
Even by the breath, and most of all by sleep.
Her slumber was then no fault: go you and find her.
PHYSICIAN.
It is not strange that a bought watcher drowses;
What is most strange is that the Queen sleeps
Who would not sleep for all my draughts of sleep
In the last days. When did this change appear?
MERRYN.
We shall not know, it came while Gormflaith nodded.
When I awoke her and she saw the Queen
She could not speak for fear:
When the rekindling lamp showed certainly
The bed-clothes stirring about our lady's neck,
She knew there was no death, she breathed, she said
She had not slept until her mistress slept
And lulled her; but I asked her how her mistress
Slept, and her utterance faded.
She should be blamed with rods, as I was blamed
For slumber, after a day and a night of watching,
By the Queen's child-bed, twenty years ago.
LEAR.
She does what she must do: let her alone.
I know her watch is now: get gone and send her.
Is it a portent now to sleep at night?
What change is here? What see you in the Queen?
Can you discern how this disease will end?
PHYSICIAN.
Surmise might spring and healing follow yet,
If I could find a trouble that could heal;
But these strong inward pains that keep her ebbing
Have not their source in perishing flesh.
I have seen women creep into their beds
And sink with this blind pain because they nursed
Some bitterness or burden in the mind
That drew the life, sucklings too long at breast.
Do you know such a cause in this poor lady?
LEAR.
There is no cause. How should there be a cause?
PHYSICIAN.
We cannot die wholly against our wills;
And in the texture of women I have found
Harder determination than in men:
The body grows impatient of enduring,
The harried mind is from the body estranged,
And we consent to go: by the Queen's touch,
The way she moves, or does not move, in bed,
The eyes so cold and keen in her white mask,
I know she has consented.
The snarling look of a mute wounded hawk,
That would be let alone, is always hers,
Yet she was sorely tender: it may be
Some wound in her affection will not heal.
We should be careful, the mind can so be hurt
That nought can make it be unhurt again.
Where, then, did her affection most persist?
LEAR.
Old bone-patcher, old digger in men's flesh,
Doctors are ever itching to be priests,
Meddling in conduct, natures, life's privacies.
We have been coupled now for twenty years,
And she has never turned from me an hour,
She knows a woman's duty and a queen's:
Whose, then, can her affection be but mine?
How can I hurt her, she is still my queen?
If her strong inward pain is a real pain
Find me some certain drug to medicine it:
When common beings have decayed past help,
There must be still some drug for a king to use;
For nothing ought to be denied to kings.
PHYSICIAN.
For the mere anguish there is such a potion.
The gum of warpy juniper shoots is seethed
With the torn marrow of an adder's spine;
An unflawed emerald is pashed to dust
And mingled there; that broth must cool in moonlight.
I have indeed attempted this already,
But the poor emeralds I could extort
From wry-mouthed earls' women had no force.
In two more dawns it will be late for potions....
There are not many emeralds in Britain,
And there is none for vividness and strength
Like the great stone that hangs upon your breast:
If you will waste it for her she shall be holpen.
LEAR,
Shatter my emerald? My emerald? My emerald?
A High King of Eire gave it to his daughter
Who mothered generations of us, the kings of Britain;
It has a spiritual influence; its heart
Burns when it sees the sun.... Shatter my emerald!
Only the fungused brain and carious mouth
Of senile things could shape such thought....
My emerald!
PHYSICIAN.
Speak lower, low; for your good fame, speak low,
If she should waken thus....
LEAR. There is no wise man
Believes that medicine is in a jewel.
It is enough that you have failed with one.
Seek you a common stone. I'll not do it.
Let her eat heartily: she is spent with fasting.
Let her stand up and walk: she is so still
Her blood can never nourish her. Come away.
PHYSICIAN.
I must not leave her ere the woman comes,
Or will some other woman....
LEAR. No, no, no, no;
The Queen is not herself; she speaks without sense;
Only Merryn and Gormflaith understand.
She is better quiet. Come....
My emerald!
HYGD.
I have not slept; I did but close mine eyes
A little while, a little while forgetting....
Where are you, Merryn?... Ah, it is not Merryn....
Bring me the cup of whey, woman; I thirst....
Will you speak to me if I say your name?
Will you not listen, Gormflaith? ... Can you hear?
I am very thirsty, let me drink....
Ah, wicked woman, why did I speak to you?
I will not be your suppliant again....
Where are you? O, where are you?... Where are you?
GONERIL.
Mother, were you calling?
Have I awakened you?
They said that you were sleeping.
Why are you left alone, mother, my dear one?
HYGD.
Who are you? No, no, no! Stand farther off!
You pulse and glow; you are too vital; your presence hurts....
Freshness of hill-swards, wind and trodden ling,
I should have known that Goneril stands here.
It is yet dawn, but you have been afoot
Afar and long: where could you climb so soon?
GONERIL.
Dearest, I am an evil daughter to you:
I never thought of you, O, never once,
Until I heard a moor-bird cry like you.
I am wicked, rapt in joys of breath and life,
And I must force myself to think of you.
I leave you to caretakers' cold gentleness;
But O, I did not think that they dare leave you.
What woman should be here?
HYGD. I have forgot....
I know not.... She will be about some duty.
I do not matter: my time is done ... nigh done ...
Bought hands can well prepare me for a grave,
And all the generations must serve youth.
My girls shall live untroubled while they may,
And learn happiness once while yet blind men
Have injured not their freedom;
For women are not meant for happiness.
Where have you been, my falcon?
GONERIL.
I dreamt that I was swimming, shoulder up,
And drave the bed-clothes spreading to the floor:
Coldness awoke me; through the waning darkness
I heard far hounds give shivering aëry tongue,
Remote, withdrawing, suddenly faint and near;
I leapt and saw a pack of stretching weasels
Hunt a pale coney in a soundless rush,
Their elfin and thin yelping pierced my heart
As with an unseen beauty long awaited;
Wolf-skin and cloak I buckled over this night-gear,
And took my honoured spear from my bed-side
Where none but I may touch its purity,
And sped as lightly down the dewy bank
As any mothy owl that hunts quick mice.
They went crying, crying, but I lost them
Before I stept, with the first tips of light,
On Raven Crag near by the Druid Stones;
So I paused there and, stooping, pressed my hand
Against the stony bed of the clear stream;
Then entered I the circle and raised up
My shining hand in cold stern adoration
Even as the first great gleam went up the sky.
HYGD.
Ay, you do well to worship on that height:
Life is free to the quick up in the wind,
And the wind bares you for a god's descent,
For wind is a spirit immediate and aged.
And you do well to worship harsh men-gods,
God Wind and Those who built his Stones with him:
All gods are cruel, bitter, and to be bribed,
But women-gods are mean and cunning as well.
That fierce old virgin, Cornish Merryn, prays
To a young woman, yes and even a virgin,
The poorest kind of woman, and she says
That is to be a Christian: avoid then
Her worship most, for men hate such denials,
And any woman scorns her unwed daughter.
Where sped you from that height? Did Regan join you there?
GONERIL.
Does Regan worship anywhere at dawn?
The sweaty half-clad cook-maids render lard
Out in the scullery, after pig-killing,
And Regan sidles among their greasy skirts,
Smeary and hot as they, for craps to suck.
I lost my thoughts before the giant Stones...
And when anew the earth assembled round me
I swung out on the heath and woke a hare
And speared it at a cast and shouldered it,
Startled another drinking at a tarn
And speared it ere it leapt; so steady and clear
Had the god in his fastness made my mind.
Then, as I took those dead things in my hands,
I felt shame light my face from deep within,
And loathing and contempt shake in my bowels,
That such unclean coarse blows from me had issued
To crush delicate things to bloody mash
And blemish their fur when I would only kill.
My gladness left me; I careered no more
Upon the morning; I went down from there
With empty hands:
But under the first trees and without thought
I stole on conies at play and stooped at one;
I hunted it, I caught it up to me
As I outsprang it, and with this thin knife
Pierced it from eye to eye; and it was dead,
Untorn, unsullied, and with flawless fur.
Then my untroubled mind came back to me.
HYGD.
Leap down the glades with a fawn's ignorance;
Live you your fill of a harsh purity;
Be wild and calm and lonely while you may.
These are your nature's joys, and it is human
Only to recognize our natures' joys
When we are losing them for ever.
GONERIL. But why
Do you say this to me with a sore heart?
You are a queen, and speak from the top of life,
And when you choose to wish for others' joys
Those others must have woe.
HYGD.
The hour comes for you to turn to a man
And give yourself with the high heart of youth
More lavishly than a queen gives anything.
But when a woman gives herself
She must give herself for ever and have faith;
For woman is a thing of a season of years,
She is an early fruit that will not keep,
She can be drained and as a husk survive
To hope for reverence for what has been;
While man renews himself into old age,
And gives himself according to his need,
And women more unborn than his next child
May take him yet with youth
And lose him with their potence.
GONERIL.
But women need not wed these men.
HYGD.
We are good human currency, like gold,
For men to pass among them when they choose.
CORDEIL'S VOICE,
Father.... Father.... Father.... Are you here?
Merryn, ugly Merryn, let me in....
I know my father is here.... I want him.... Now....
Mother, chide Merryn, she is old and slow....
HYGD,
My little curse. Send her away, away....
CORDEIL'S VOICE.
Father.... O, father, father.... I want my father.
GONERIL,
Hush; hush, you hurt your mother with your voice.
You cannot come in, Cordeil; you must go away:
Your father is not here....
CORDEIL'S VOICE. He must be here:
He is not in his chamber or the hall,
He is not in the stable or with Gormflaith:
He promised I should ride with him at dawn
And sit before his saddle and hold his hawk,
And ride with him and ride to the heron-marsh;
He said that he would give me the first heron,
And hang the longest feathers in my hair.
GONERIL.
Then you must haste to find him;
He may be riding now....
CORDEIL'S VOICE.
But Gerda said she saw him enter here.
GONERIL.
Indeed, he is not here....
CORDEIL'S VOICE. Let me look....
GONERIL.
You are too noisy. Must I make you go?
CORDEIL'S VOICE.
Mother, Goneril is unkind to me.
HYGD,
Go, go, thou evil child, thou ill-comer.
GONERIL.
Though she is wilful, obeying only the King,
She is a very little child, mother,
To be so bitterly thought of.
HYGD.
Because a woman gives herself for ever
Cordeil the useless had to be conceived
(Like an after-thought that deceives nobody)
To keep her father from another woman.
And I lie here.
GONERIL,
Hard and unjust my father has been to me;
Yet that has knitted up within my mind
A love of coldness and a love of him
Who makes me firm, wary, swift and secret,
Until I feel if I become a mother
I shall at need be cruel to my children,
And ever cold, to string their natures harder
And make them able to endure men's deeds;
But now I wonder if injustice
Keeps house with baseness, taught by kinship,
I never thought a king could be untrue,
I never thought my father was unclean....
O mother, mother, what is it? Is this dying?
HYGD.
I think I am only faint....
Give me the cup of whey....
GONERIL.
There is too little here. When was it made?
HYGD.
Yester-eve.... Yester-morn....
GONERIL. Unhappy mother,
You have no daughter to take thought for you,
No servant's love to shame a daughter with,
Though I am shamed, you must have other food,
Straightway I bring you meat....
HYGD. It is no use....
Plenish the cup for me.... Not now, not now,
But in a while; for I am heavy now....
Old Wynoc's potions loiter in my veins,
And tides of heaviness pour over me
Each time I wake and think. I could sleep now.
GONERIL.
Then I shall lull you, as you once lulled me.
The owlets in roof-holes
Can sing for themselves;
The smallest brown squirrel
Both scampers and delves;
But a baby does nothing,
She never knows how,
She must hark to her mother
Who sings to her now.
Sleep then, ladykin, peeping so;
Hide your handies and ley lei lo.
The lish baby otter
Is sleeky and streaming,
With catching bright fishes,
Ere babies learn dreaming;
But no wet little otter
Is ever so warm
As the fleecy-wrapt baby
'Twixt me and my arm.
Sleep big mousie....
HYGD,
Be quiet.... I cannot bear it.
Why did you leave the Queen? Where have you been?
Why have you so neglected this grave duty?
GORMFLAITH.
This is the instant of my duty, Princess:
From midnight until now was Merryn's watch.
I thought to find her here: is she not here?
GONERIL.
I found the Queen alone. I heard her cry your name.
GORMFLAITH.
Your anger is not too great, Madam; I grieve
That one so old as Merryn should act thus,
So old and trusted and favoured, and so callous.
GONERIL.
The Queen has had no food since yester-night.
GORMFLAITH.
Madam, that is too monstrous to conceive:
I will seek food, I will prepare it now.
GONERIL.
Stay here: and know, if the Queen is left again,
You shall be beaten with two rods at once.
GORMFLAITH,
"Open your window when the moon is dead,
And I will come again.
The men say everywhere that you are faithless,
The women say your face is a false face
And your eyes shifty eyes. Ah, but I love you, Gormflaith.
Do not forget your window-latch to-night,
For when the moon is dead the house is still."
LEAR,
Lady, what do you read?
GORMFLAITH. I read a letter, Sire.
LEAR.
A letter, a letter, what read you in a letter?
GORMFLAITH,
Your words to me, my lonely joy your words....
"If you are steady and true as your gaze",
LEAR,
Pest!
You should not carry a king's letters about,
Nor hoard a king's letters.
GORMFLAITH. No, Sire.
LEAR.
Must the King also stand in the presence now?
GORMFLAITH,
Pardon my troubled mind; you have taken my letter from me.
GORMFLAITH.
Wait, wait, I might be seen. The Queen may waken yet.
LEAR.
You have been long in coming:
Was Merryn long in finding you?
GORMFLAITH,
Did Merryn....
Has Merryn been.... She loitered long before she came,
For I was at the women's bathing-place ere dawn....
No jewel in all the land excites me and enthralls
Like this strong source of light that lives upon your breast.
LEAR,
Wear it within your breast to fill the gentle place
That cherished the poor letter lately torn from you.
GORMFLAITH.
Did Merryn at your bidding, then, forsake her Queen?
You must not, ah, you must not do these masterful things,
Even to grasp a precious meeting for us two;
For the reproach and chiding are so hard to me,
And even you can never fight the silent women
In hidden league against me, all this house of women.
Merryn has left her Queen in unwatched loneliness,
And yet your daughter Princess Goneril has said
(With lips that scarce held back the spittle for my face)
That if the Queen is left again I shall be whipt.
LEAR.
Children speak of the punishments they know.
Her back is now not half so white as yours,
And you shall write your will upon it yet.
GORMFLAITH.
Ah, no, my King, my faithful... Ah, no... no...
The Princess Goneril is right; she judges me:
A sinful woman cannot steadily gaze reply
To the cool, baffling looks of virgin untried force.
She stands beside that crumbling mother in her hate,
And, though we know so well, she and I, O we know,
That she could love no mother nor partake in anguish,
Yet she is flouted when the King forsakes her dam,
She must protect her very flesh, her tenderer flesh,
Although she cannot wince; she's wild in her cold brain,
And soon I must be made to pay a cruel price
For this one gloomy joy in my uncherished life.
Envy and greed are watching me aloof
(Yes, now none of the women will walk with me),
Longing to see me ruined, but she'll do it....
It is a lonely thing to love a king....
LEAR.
Goldilocks, when the crown is couching in your hair
And those two mingled golds brighten each other's wonder,
You shall produce a son from flesh unused,
Virgin I chose you for that, first crops are strongest,
A tawny fox with your high-stepping action,
With your untiring power and glittering eyes,
To hold my lands together when I am done,
To keep my lands from crumbling into mouthfuls
For the short jaws of my three mewling vixens.
Hatch for me such a youngster from my seed,
And I and he shall rein my hot-breathed wenches
To let you grind the edges off their teeth.
GORMFLAITH,
Life holds no more than this for me; this is my hour.
When she is dead I know you'll buy another Queen,
Giving a county for her, gaining a duchy with her,
And put me to wet nursing, leashing me with the thralls.
It will not be unbearable, I've had your love.
Master and friend, grant then this hour to me:
Never again, maybe, can we two sit
At love together, unwatched, unknown of all,
In the Queen's chamber, near the Queen's crown
And with no conscious Queen to hold it from us:
Now let me wear the Queen's true crown on me
And snatch a breathless knowledge of the feeling
Of what it would have been to sit by you
Always and closely, equal and exalted,
To be my light when life is dark again.
LEAR.
Girl, by the black stone god, I did not think
You had the nature of a chambermaid,
Who pries and fumbles in her lady's clothes
With her red hands, or on her soily neck
Stealthily hangs her lady's jewels or pearls.
You shall be tiring-maid to the next queen
And try her crown on every day o' your life
In secrecy, if that is your desire:
If you would be a queen, cleanse yourself quickly
Of menial fingering and servile thought.
GORMFLAITH.
You need not crown me. Let me put it on
As briefly as a gleam of Winter sun.
I will not even warm it with my hair.
LEAR.
You cannot have the nature of a queen
If you believe that there are things above you:
Crowns make no queens, queens are the cause of crowns.
Gormflaith,
Then I will take one. Look.
LEAR.
Come here, mad thing, come back!
Your shadow will wake the Queen.
GORMFLAITH.
Hush, hush! That angry voice
Will surely wake the Queen.
LEAR.
Go back; bear back the crown:
Hang up the crown again.
We are not helpless serfs
To think things are forbidden
And steal them for our joy.
GORMFLAITH.
Hush! Hush! It is too late;
I dare not go again.
LEAR.
Put down the crown: your hands are base hands yet.
Give it to me: it issues from my hands.
Let anger keep your eyes steady and bright
To be my guiding mirror: do not move.
You have received two queens within your eyes.
LEAR,
Doff it. () Enough. () Unless you do () my will ()
I shall () I shall () I'll have you () sent () to (), ,
GORMFLAITH. Hush.
LEAR.
Come to the garden: you shall hear me there.
GORMFLAITH.
I dare not leave the Queen.... Yes, yes, I come.
LEAR.
No, you are better here: the guard would see you.
GORMFLAITH.
Not when we reach the pathway near the apple-yard.
LEAR.
Girl, you are changed: you yield more beauty so.
HYGD,
How have they vanished? What are they doing now?
GORMFLAITH,
If you have a mind to kiss me
You shall kiss me in the dark:
Yet rehearse, or you might miss me,
Make my mouth your noontide mark....
HYGD.
Does he remember love-ways used with me?
Shall I never know? Is it too near?
I'll watch him at his wooing once again,
Though I peer up at him across my grave-sill.
Limbs, will you die? It is not yet the time.
I know more discipline: I'll make you go.
It is too far. I cannot see the wall.
I will go ten more steps: only ten more.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Sundown is soon to-day: it is cold and dark.
Now ten steps more, and much will have been done.
One. Two. Three. Four. Ten.
Eleven. Twelve. Sixteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
Twenty-one. Twenty-three. Twenty-eight. Thirty. Thirty-one.
At last the turn. Thirty-six. Thirty-nine. Forty.
Now only once again. Two. Three.
What do the voices say? I hear too many.
The door: but here there is no garden.... Ah!
GONERIL.
Where are you? What have you done? Speak to me.
Merryn, hither, hither.... Mother, O mother!
MERRYN.
Princess, what has she done? Who has left her?
She must have been alone.
GONERIL. Where is Gormflaith?
MERRYN.
Mercy o' mercies, everybody asks me
For Gormflaith, then for Gormflaith, then for Gormflaith,
And I ask everybody else for her;
But she is nowhere, and the King will foam.
Send me no more; I am old with running about
After a bodiless name.
GONERIL. She has been here,
And she has left the Queen. This is her deed.
MERRYN.
Ah, cruel, cruel! The shame, the pity,
GONERIL. Lift.
She breathes, but something flitters under her flesh:
Wynoc the leech must help us now. Go, run,
Seek him, and come back quickly, and do not dare
To come without him.
MERRYN. It is useless, lady:
There's fever at the cowherd's in the marsh,
And Wynoc broods above it twice a day,
And I have lately seen him hobble thither.
GONERIL.
I never heard such scornful wickedness
As that a king's physician so should choose
To watch and even heal base men and poor,
And, more than all, when there's a queen a-dying....
HYGD,
Whence come you, dearest daughter? What have I done?
Are you a dream? I thought I was alone.
Have you been hunting on the Windy Height?
Your hands are not thus gentle after hunting.
Or have I heard you singing through my sleep?
Stay with me now: I have had piercing thoughts
Of what the ways of life will do to you
To mould and maim you, and I have a power
To bring these to expression that I knew not.
Why do you wear my crown? Why do you wear
My crown I say? Why do you wear my crown?
I am falling, falling! Lift me: hold me up.
It is the bed that breaks, for still I sink.
Grip harder: I am slipping!
GONERIL. Woman, help!
HYGD.
Why is the King's mother standing there?
She should not wear her crown before me now.
Send her away, she had a savage mind.
Will you not hang a shawl across the corner
So that she cannot stare at me again?
Ah, she is coming! Do not let her touch me!
Brave splendid daughter, how easily you save me:
But soon will Gormflaith come, she stays for ever.
O, will she bring my crown to me once more?
Yes, Gormflaith, yes.... Daughter, pay Gormflaith well.
GONERIL.
Gormflaith has left you lonely:
'Tis Gormflaith who shall pay.
HYGD.
No, Gormflaith; Gormflaith.... Not my loneliness....
Everything.... Pay Gormflaith....
GONERIL,
Send horsemen to the marshes for the leech,
And let them bind him on a horse's back
And bring him swiftlier than an old man rides.
MERRYN.
This is no leech's work: she's a dead woman.
I'd best be finding if the wisdom-women
Have come from Brita's child-bed to their drinking
By the cook's fire, for soon she'll be past handling.
GONERIL.
This is not death: death could not be like this.
She is quite warm, though nothing moves in her.
I did not know death could come all at once:
If life is so ill-seated no one is safe.
Cannot we leave her like herself awhile?
Wait awhile, Merryn.... No, no, no; not yet!
MERRYN.
Child, she is gone and will not come again
However we cover our faces and pretend
She will be there if we uncover them.
I must be hasty, or she'll be as stiff
As a straw mattress is.
Come back, come back; the things I have not done
Beat in upon my brain from every side:
I know not where to put myself to bear them:
If I could have you now I could act well.
My inward life, deeds that you have not known,
I burn to tell you in a sudden dread
That now your ghost discovers them in me.
Hearken, mother; between us there's a bond
Of flesh and essence closer than love can cause:
It cannot be unknit so soon as this,
And you must know my touch,
And you shall yield a sign.
Feel, feel this urging throb: I call to you. Come back.
GORMFLAITH.
Come back! Help me and shield me!
LEAR. What is to do?
GONERIL,
O, Sir, the Queen is dead: long live the Queen.
You have been ready with the coronation.
LEAR.
What do you mean? Young madam, will you mock?
GONERIL.
But is not she your choice?
The old Queen thought so, for I found her here,
Lipping the prints of her supplanter's feet,
Prostrate in homage, on her face, silent.
I tremble within to have seen her fallen down.
I must be pardoned if I scorn your ways:
You cannot know this feeling that I know,
You are not of her kin or house; but I
Share blood with her, and, though she grew too worn
To be your Queen, she was my mother, Sir.
GORMFLAITH.
The Queen has seen me.
LEAR.
She is safe in bed.
GONERIL.
Do not speak low: your voice sounds guilty so;
And there is no more need, she will not wake.
LEAR.
She cannot sleep for ever. When she wakes
I will announce my purpose in the need
Of Britain for a prince to follow me,
And tell her that she is to be deposed....
What have you done? She is not breathing now.
She breathed here lately. Is she truly dead?
GONERIL.
Your graceful consort steals from us too soon:
Will you not tell her that she should remain,
If she can trust the faith you keep with a queen?
Lady, why will you go? The King intends
That you shall soon be royal, and thereby
Admitted to our breed: then stay with us
In this domestic privacy to mourn
The grief here fallen on our family.
Kneel now; I yield the eldest daughter's place.
Why do you fumble in your bosom so?
Put your cold hands together; close your eyes,
In inward isolation to assemble
Your memories of the dead, your prayers for her.
What utterance of doom would the king use
Upon a watchman in the castle garth
Who left his gate and let an enemy in?
The watcher by the Queen thus left her station:
The sick bruised Queen is dead of that neglect.
And what should be the doom on a seducer
Who drew that sentinel from his fixt watch?
LEAR.
She had long been dying, and she would have died
Had all her dutiful daughters tended her bed.
GONERIL.
Yes, she had long been dying in her heart.
She lived to see you give her crown away;
She died to see you fondle a menial:
These blows you dealt now, but what elder wounds
Received them to such purpose suddenly?
What had you caused her to remember most?
What things would she be like to babble over
In the wild helpless hour when fitful life
No more can choose what thoughts it shall encourage
In the tost mind? She has suffered you twice over,
Your animal thoughts and hungry powers, this day,
Until I knew you unkingly and untrue.
LEAR.
Punishment once taught you daughterly silence;
It shall be tried again.... What has she said?
GONERIL.
You cannot touch me now I know your nature:
Your force upon my mind was only terrible
When I believed you a cruel flawless man.
Ruler of lands and dreaded judge of men,
Now you have done a murder with your mind
Can you see any murderer put to death?
Can you,
LEAR. What has she said?
GONERIL.
Continue in your joy of punishing evil,
Your passion of just revenge upon wrong-doers,
Unkingly and untrue?
LEAR. Enough: what do you know?
GONERIL.
That which could add a further agony
To the last agony, the daily poison
Of her late, withering life; but never word
Of fairer hours or any lost delight.
Have you no memory, either, of her youth,
While she was still to use, spoil, forsake,
That maims your new contentment with a longing
For what is gone and will not come again?
LEAR.
I did not know that she could die to-day.
She had a bloodless beauty that cheated me:
She was not born for wedlock. She shut me out.
She is no colder now.... I'll hear no more.
You shall be answered afterward for this.
Put something over her: get her buried:
I will not look on her again.
GORMFLAITH.
My King, you leave me!
GONERIL. Soon we follow him:
But, ah, poor fragile beauty, you cannot rise
While this grave burden weights your drooping head.
You were not nurtured to sustain a crown,
Your unanointed parents could not breed
The spirit that ten hundred years must ripen.
Lo, how you sink and fail.
GORMFLAITH. You had best take care,
For where my neck has bruises yours shall have wounds.
The King knows of your wolfish snapping at me:
He will protect me.
GONERIL. Ay, if he is in time.
Take it and let me go!
GONERIL. Nay, not to me:
You are the Queen's, to serve her even in death.
Yield her her own. Approach her: do not fear;
She will not chide you or forgive you now.
Go on your knees; the crown still holds you down.
Mother and Queen, to you this holiest circlet
Returns, by you renews its purpose and pride;
Though it is sullied with a menial warmth,
Your august coldness shall rehallow it,
And when the young lewd blood that lent it heat
Is also cooler we can well forget.
Rise. Come, for here there is no more to do,
And let us seek your chamber, if you will,
There to confer in greater privacy;
For we have now interment to prepare.
You must walk first, you are still the Queen elect.
GORMFLAITH,
What will you do?
GONERIL,
On. On. On. Go in.
THE YOUNGER WOMAN.
We were listening. We were listening.
THE ELDER WOMAN. We were both listening.
THE YOUNGER WOMAN.
Did she struggle?
THE ELDER WOMAN.
She could not struggle long.
THE ELDER WOMAN,
Saving your presence, Madam, we are come
To make you sweeter than you'll be hereafter,
And then be done with you.
THE YOUNGER WOMAN,
Three days together, my Lady, y'have had me ducked
For easing a foolish maid at the wrong time;
But now your breath is stopped and you are colder,
And you shall be as wet as a drowned cat
Ere I have done with you.
THE ELDER WOMAN,
Her pocket is empty; Merryn has been here first.
Hearken, and then begin:
You have not touched a royal corpse before,
But I have stretched a king and an old queen,
A king's aunt and a king's brother too,
Without much boasting of a still-born princess;
So that I know, as a priest knows his prayers,
All that is written in the chamberlain's book
About the handling of exalted corpses,
Stripping them and trussing them for the grave:
And there it says that the chief corpse-washer
Shall take for her own use by sacred right
The coverlid, the upper sheet, the mattress
Of any bed in which a queen has died,
And the last robe of state the body wore;
While humbler helpers may divide among them
The under sheet, the pillow, and the bed-gown
Stript from the cooling queen.
Be thankful, then, and praise me every day
That I have brought no other women with me
To spoil you of your share.
THE YOUNGER WOMAN.
Ah, you have always been a friend to me:
Many's the time I have said I did not know
How I could even have lived but for your kindness.
THE ELDER WOMAN.
Pull her feet straight: is your mind wandering?
A louse crept out of my lady's shift,
Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee,
Crying "Oi! Oi! We are turned adrift;
The lady's bosom is cold and stiffed,
And her arm-pit's cold for me."
THE ELDER WOMAN,
What have you there? Give it to me.
THE YOUNGER WOMAN. It is mine:
I found it.
THE ELDER WOMAN,
Leave it.
THE YOUNGER WOMAN. Let go.
THE ELDER WOMAN. Leave it, I say.
Will you not? Will you not? An eye for a jewel, then!
THE YOUNGER WOMAN,
Oh!
THE YOUNGER WOMAN.
Aie! Aie! Aie! Old thief! You are always thieving!
You stole a necklace on your wedding-day:
You could not bear a child, you stole your daughter:
You stole a shroud the morn your husband died:
Last week you stole the Princess Regan's comb....
THE ELDER WOMAN,
"The lady's linen's no longer neat;",
Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee,
"Her savour is neither warm nor sweet;
It's close for two in a winding-sheet,
And lice are too good for worms to eat;
So here's no place for me."
THE ELDER WOMAN.
Still work for old Hrogneda, little Princess?
GONERIL,
The way is easy: and it is to be used.
How could this need have been conceived slowly?
In a keen mind it should have leapt and burnt:
What I have done would have been better done
When my sad mother lived and could feel joy.
This striking without thought is better than hunting;
She showed more terror than an animal,
She was more shiftless....
A little blood is lightly washed away,
A common stain that need not be remembered;
And a hot spasm of rightness quickly born
Can guide me to kill justly and shall guide.
LEAR.
Goneril, Gormflaith, Gormflaith.... Have you seen Gormflaith?
GONERIL.
I led her to her chamber lately, Sir.
LEAR.
Ay, she is in her chamber. She is there.
GONERIL.
Have you been there already? Could you not wait?
LEAR.
Daughter, she is bleeding: she is slain.
GONERIL,
Yes, she is slain: I did it with a knife:
And in this water is dissolved her blood,
That now I scatter on the Queen of death
For signal to her spirit that I can slake
Her long corrosion of misery with such balm,
Blood for weeping, terror for woe, death for death,
A broken body for a broken heart.
What will you say against me and my deed?
LEAR.
That now you cannot save yourself from me.
While your blind virgin power still stood apart
In an unused, unviolated life,
You judged me in my weakness, and because
I felt you unflawed I could not answer you;
But you have mingled in mortality
And violently begun the common life
By fault against your fellows; and the state,
The state of Britain that inheres in me
Not touched by my humanity or sin,
Passions or privy acts, shall be as hard
And savage to you as to a murderess.
GONERIL,
I found a warrant in her favoured bosom, King:
She wore this on her heart when you were crowning her.
LEAR,
But this is not my hand:
Where is the other letter?
GONERIL.
Is there another letter? What should it say?
LEAR.
There is no other letter if you have none.
"Open your window when the moon is dead,
And I will come again.
The men say everywhere that you are faithless....
And your eyes shifty eyes. Ah, but I love you, Gormflaith...."
This is not hers: she'd not receive such words.
GONERIL.
Her name stands twice therein: her perfume fills it:
My knife went through it ere I found it on her.
LEAR.
The filth is suitably dead. You are my true daughter.
GONERIL.
I do not understand how men can govern,
Use craft and exercise the duty of cunning,
Anticipate treason, treachery meet with treachery,
And yet believe a woman because she looks
Straight in their eyes with mournful, trustful gaze,
And lisps like innocence, all gentleness.
Your Gormflaith could not answer a woman's eyes.
I did not need to read her in a letter;
I am not woman yet, but I can feel
What untruths are instinctive in my kind,
And how some men desire deceit from us.
Come; let these washers do what they must do:
Or shall your Queen be wrapped and coffined awry?
LEAR.
I thought she had been broken long ago:
She must be wedded and broken, I cannot do it.
THE ELDER WOMAN.
Poor, masterful King, he is no easier,
Although his tearful wife is gone at last:
A wilful girl shall prick and thwart him now.
Old gossip, we must hasten; the Queen is setting.
Lend me a pair of pennies to weight her eyes.
THE YOUNGER WOMAN.
Find your own pennies: then you can steal them safely.
THE ELDER WOMAN.
Praise you the gods of Britain, as I do praise them,
That I have been sweet-natured from my birth,
And that I lack your unforgiving mind.
Friend of the worms, help me to lift her clear
And draw away the under sheet for you;
Then go and spread the shroud by the hall fire,
I never could put damp linen on a corpse.
The louse made off unhappy and wet;,
Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee,
He's looking for us, the little pet;
So haste, for her chin's to tie up yet,
And let us be gone with what we can get,
Her ring for thee, her gown for Bet,
Her pocket turned out for me.
CURTAIN.